Racine, Wisconsin (July 13, 2014) — Fortaleza, Brazil, is home to the Carnauba palm which produces Carnauba wax, the "queen of waxes." In 1935, Herbert Fisk Johnson, Jr., the grandson of the S.C. Johnson company's founder, flew a Sikorsky S-38 amphibious plane from Racine to northeastern Brazil on a mission to secure a source of Carnauba wax for the company, then suffering in the Great Depression. The trip turned the company's fortunes around. Sixty-three years later, in 1998, Samuel Curtis Johnson, Jr., the founder's great-grandson, recreated his father's 7,500-mile journey in a custom-built replica of the original plane named "The Spirit Of Carnauba." Here, the plane is suspended in Fortaleza Hall, a 2010 glass oval memorial building designed by the British architectural firm Foster + Partners. Below the plane, a huge map of the Western Hemisphere has been painstakingly constructed as a mosaic of wooden parquet.

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December 29th, 2016

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